In the highly specialized world of spacecraft engineering, names and descriptions are often reduced to acronyms and abbreviations, which are faster to string together in a sentence but can end up sounding downright alien.

"Even folks from other missions have no idea what we're talking about," said Michael Watkins, mission manager of NASA's $2.5 billion Mars project set to land Sunday night.

Let's start with the rover's name. In the halls of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, it's called MSL -- short for Mars Science Laboratory. Spacecraft typically have technical names before being rechristened by the public through naming contests sponsored by NASA.

MSL did not become Curiosity until 2009 when a sixth-grader from Kansas proposed the nickname. Still, there are some hard-cores who continue to use the scientific moniker.

Curiosity is loaded with the most sophisticated instruments to study Mars' environment -- with convoluted names to match. Mastcam refers to the pair of 2-megapixel color cameras on the rover's "head." SAM -- short for Sample Analysis at Mars -- is the mobile chemistry lab designed to sniff for carbon compounds. ChemCam stands for Chemistry and Camera, otherwise known as the rock-zapping laser. And RAD? That's the radiation detector.

Systemwide shorthand

Before Curiosity can start science experiments, it first must survive an intense EDL -- entry, descent and landing -- or, as NASA has come to call it, seven minutes of terror.

Signals are received through the DSN, or Deep Space Network, a worldwide network of antenna dishes that communicates with interplanetary spacecraft.

Nominal means A-OK. Not so for anomaly (translation: Houston, we have a problem).

The dizzying naming system even extends to time. It takes Earth 24 hours to spin on its axis -- the definition of a day.

Mars spins more slowly than Earth -- taking 24 hours and 40 minutes. To distinguish between Earth and Mars time, a Martian day is called a sol, Latin for "sun." Yesterday on Mars is yestersol.

Newcomers often find there's a steep curve to master the technical language.

"It takes some time to pick it up," said Ken Farley, a professor at the California Institute of Technology who is participating in his first space mission.

Luckily, Farley said, new shorthand words are added to the mission's internal website.

JPL scientist Deborah Bass said it's important to talk with precision. But she said it's also essential not to alienate fans.